


Modern and Interesting

by acertaindefenseattorney



Series: Prompt responses [3]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Kissing, M/M, Romance, a lot of internal nonsense, above-waist fun, very very very corny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 13:45:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5419301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acertaindefenseattorney/pseuds/acertaindefenseattorney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt fill for @marshallismyname. Things you said after you kissed me. </p><p>Thomas has just returned from America. There is kissing and talk and Jimmy is typically overwhelmed by and slightly combative about the ugly prospect of having actual feelings, and it’s very corny and this is only the second time I’ve ever written them so god knows if I have their voices right at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Modern and Interesting

It’s supremely annoying, how Thomas Barrow’s kisses can get to him like they do. When they’d first started, he’d thought perhaps that if it was too much, if nerves got the better of him, then he’d be able to pretend it was like kissing a girl; but that plan was short-lived. Thomas’s kisses run deep and searching, are almost filthy for it; the way the whole length of his tongue fits alongside Jimmy’s in his mouth goes straight to his prick; the taste of him, the obscene way he licks, bites, _sucks_ … there’s nothing feminine about it.  

He tries to give back as good as he gets, but always comes out of it the worse off between them. Heavy lidded and flushed, eyes fogged and hair mussed, while Thomas remains perfectly unchanged, but for the ink in his eyes, and a single band of colour blooming above his collar.

 Now is no different - no more than two minutes, and he’s gone weak and boneless, head pressed to the pillows, skin electric and shivering, while Thomas, with a hand on either side of his throat, simply kisses him stupid, as though this were perfectly ordinary behaviour. As though he weren’t, at this moment, reaching inside him, and rearranging his innards into new patterns of soft need and hard want. 

It’s unbearable. His face is burning, he’s already _hard_ , he could cry for it.

And still Thomas touches him nowhere other than his throat, his mouth; until the simple act of a thumb sweeping the line of his jaw, or probing gently at the point where their lips meet, feels as erotic as if he’d grabbed him by the balls. 

Times like this he can find himself mewling, unbidden, like a kitten into Thomas’s mouth, much to his great amusement - and on such occassions, he half wonders if it’s worth it, this constant humiliation at the hands of his _bloody_ traitorous body; if perhaps he shouldn’t just go back to chasing after girls, with whom he at least has the lead -

but then Thomas places a hand on him, shoots him a look across the hall, presses a kiss to the nape of his neck when no-one is looking… and the idea of ever giving _this_ up seems absurd. 

By the time he pulls away, to gaze down at him fondly, sleepy-eyed, and brush a strand of hair from his forehead, Jimmy feels completely plundered. Done in and desperate for more all at once. 

He digs the heels of his palms into his eyes, panting, and laughs lightly.

‘For God’s sake,’ he says, ‘ _do_ something,’ and Thomas hums, nipping at his throat, nose bumping against the swell of his cheek.

‘I’m quite tired. A gentleman might let me sleep,’ he murmurs, words cut through with a smirk, another teasing bite.

 Jimmy snorts, giving him an incredulous look.

‘Well, don’t mistake me for one, then,’ Thomas pinches his side and he shifts, catching his wrist, shooting him a playful scowl even as he pulls his hand to his chest, lacing fingers, casual as you like, and hoping quietly to himself that Thomas won’t make a big fuss about it. 

‘I’m sure it’s fine for you, having found the past month so very ‘modern’ and ‘interesting’, but some of us were stuck _here_ , serving tea and shining silver, with nothing to occupy _us_ after dark.’

Thomas’s lips stretch into a lazy grin against his throat. He can feel it. It’s maddening. 

‘You could’ve found something to do,’ he says, voice soft. ‘Face like yours. You needn’t look far.’

‘I know that,’ Jimmy sighs, glancing up at the window - the line of the stable roof, the weathervane cutting a wedge out of the moon - anything to avoid having to look at Thomas Barrow’s smug _bloody_ face.  

‘I didn’t want to, did I? I thought -’ he can’t help but squirm a little. ‘I thought I’d wait.’ 

Now Thomas has propped himself up on one elbow, and is looking down at him with those fond eyes again, and beneath the layers of arousal, and need and hate and hopeless adoration, Jimmy feels stupid. Very, very stupid. You didn’t have to tell him that, he thinks. _Have some self control_ , he thinks.

Self control’s not been his strong point, when it comes to Mr Barrow. 

As a rule.

‘You’re jealous,’ Thomas murmurs, with a hint of hope that borders on satisfaction, and Jimmy feels the need to put a cork in _that_ right away.

'No, I’m not,’ he says - and means it. He does _mean_ it. ‘Just because I decided it wasn’t worth it doesn’t mean I expected you to - you know. We’re not _sweethearts_ , are we?’ Thomas’s smile, at that, only widens, but he presses on regardless.

‘I quite liked thinking about it, actually - not like that, stop _grinning_. Only, Lady Mary had great fun, dropping hints at what a _grand old time_ you must be having, and I was pleased for you, that’s all.’ 

‘Lady Mary said that?’ Thomas muses, quietly, half-distracted, amusement creasing at the corners of his eyes. ‘Well, I never…’ 

‘She’s not daft.’

‘Depends how you judge her.’ 

And now Thomas sighs softly, bringing one thumb up to brush across Jimmy’s bottom lip, swollen and bruised and loose from kissing, and his head spins like a top. 

It’s so _shaming_ , to wear his racing heart pinned to his sleeve all the time, like a bloody maid.  

Sometimes, Jimmy feels as if between his aching smile and his aching cock, this room may as well have no walls at all. That surely the whole house can see him, feeling as loudly as he is. That surely if Alfred, or Mr Carson, were to walk down the hall at a moment like this one, they would not be able to pass Thomas’s door without being knocked flat by the force of it, this - thing, which has waited a month and been neither diminished nor enhanced by the physical absence, but sat exactly as it was beneath his breast, not flaring nor waning and  

\- oh, he’s no good at poetry, but the point is that what he feels for Thomas Barrow, lust and love alike - it’s stuck, as soundly as a splinter.

He scrubs at his eyes again, and wiggles and shifts. ‘Stop looking at me like that, Mr Barrow. I only said I was pleased to wait — and pleased you got your own leg over, elsewhere, no less. I’ve not made any declarations, have I?’

‘I didn’t,’ Thomas says.

‘What?’

‘Get up to anything. On the boat. In New York.’

‘What?’ 

‘Mmm..’ Thomas half-smiles, a little bashful, perhaps, or only tired - Jimmy can’t tell. His smiles remain quite rare, and though he sees more of them than most, he has yet to be able to catalogue them, by type, like he has his frowns and smirks and glares, for easy interpretation.   

This smile shows no teeth; lacks edge entirely; is not wide enough, yet, to reach his eyes. All soft. He is pleased to note that the colour above his collar has spread to his cheeks, his jaw.  

’I went out, that’s all. I allowed a couple of American blokes to buy me drinks, and thoroughly disappointed them by returning home, with my honour intact, before midnight.’

‘That’s not—’ Jimmy breathes, but thinks better of it, and cuts himself off, saying instead:

‘That’s a terrible waste of a trip, Mr Barrow.’  

And then, after a pause. ‘What was so interesting, then?’

‘Lord, Jimmy,’ Thomas laughs, gently, settling at his side with a hand across his chest, fingers tracing absent circles over his heart. ‘Everything. It’s New York.’  

Jimmy breathes a laugh. Yes, he supposes he’d rather forgot the wider picture. When he pictures himself if given the chance to go to New York, he sees himself drinking cocktails in bars, riding in elevators; taking in a jazz band, tasting the food. 

And for a month, all he has imagined Thomas doing is melting into the arms of strangers. 

_As foolish as a maid._  

‘You were happy to let me think it,’ he says, only a little defensively, in dual conversation with Thomas and himself, and Thomas’s lips twitch at the corners, and his fingers tap gently on Jimmy’s chest, and still, and he makes a soft noise in the back of his throat.

Beyond that, he doesn’t answer, which is not at all unusual. For a romantic, Thomas Barrow does so hate to speak of the heart. 

Jimmy knows, anyway. 

‘Well,’ he says, finally. ‘I’m - I am, I’m quite glad. I admit it.’ 


End file.
